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Awe grips first winner
From The Fargo Forum

By Jeff Kolpack, The Forum

07/28/2002

The excitement peaked for Rachael Holthaus when she ascended the raised center mat at the Fargodome. Her name was just announced in the cavernous building.

Friends back home in Little Falls, Minn., probably had no idea what she was doing in Fargo this weekend.

"They haven't experienced a big national tournament," she said. "You're the only one on the raised stage."

She'll be the only answer to the following trivia question: Who was the first girls Junior National gold-medal winner?

Her weight class was the first title match in the first-ever tournament.

"It was awesome," she said.

It was one small step for female wrestlers, one giant technical fall for Holthaus. She was dominating in defeating Bernadette Javier of Honolulu, 11-0.

The girls tournament preceded the Junior boys freestyle national championships on Saturday. That tournament has been a fixture since 1971.

And once again, it delivered some top-gun performances. It featured 13 finalists who will enter Division I schools this fall.

In perhaps the featured match, Iowa-bound Todd Meneely of Omaha, Neb., defeated Oklahoma-bound and two-time defending Junior freestyle champion Teyon Ware of Edmond, Okla., 5-4 at 135 pounds.

Meneely won a Greco-Roman title earlier this week and was a four-time state prep champion. Ware was 140-0 in high school.

The featured high school Saturday was Blair Academy, N.J. It had two champions &emdash; Robert Preston at 119 and Zach Esposito at 152 &endash; and one runner-up in Mark Perry at 160.

In a rarity, Minnesota did not have a finalist, leaving girls team members Holthaus and Alicia Mena of St. Paul as the state's national champions.

"It's just a big step for the whole women's program," Holthaus said.

She'll be a sophomore at Little Falls High School. She was 13-5 on the boys varsity team last year.

"It's just great they started the women's tournament," she said. "It will open up so many more opportunities."

One opportunity Holthaus has her eyes on will be held in Athens, Greece, in 2004.

"I'm going to get ready for the Olympics," she said.

Rachael Holthaus of Little Falls, Minn., displays her championship plaque after winning the USA Wrestling Junior Nationals. Photo by Dave Wallis/The Forum

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Arnhold proving girls can wrestle with best
Marion wrestler Chelsea Arnhold has a good chance to return to state.

BY CORBETT SMITH 2/14/03
Wichita Eagle correspondent

It happened last year at the Class 3-2-1A regional wrestling tournament in Garden Plain.

Freshman Chelsea Arnhold sat near the mat with the other Marion cheerleaders, rooting on her classmates.

That, by itself, wasn't unusual. Arnhold is a cheerleader.

What was strange about Arnhold's appearance was the fact she had already competed in the meet.

Chelsea Arnhold is also a wrestler.

And a good one.

As a freshman, she became one of three girls ever to compete in the state tournament, joining Santa Fe Trail's Brooke Bogren in 1999 and Cherryvale's Cherri Volpert in 2001.

Competing in the 103-pound division, Arnhold dropped her only two matches at state, finishing the season 21-11.

This season, she's compiled a 19-8 record with eight pins -- with most of her losses coming against state-ranked wrestlers and kids from larger schools.

A return visit to state, this time with a little more success, is well within reach, Marion wrestling coach Chad Adkins said.

"She should qualify," Adkins said. "If she goes out there and takes care of business, I have no doubt she should do it."

When her brother Levi -- who graduated in 2001 -- started wrestling as a freshman, Arnhold got a taste of the sport.

She traveled to her brother's meets, and, at times, played the role of a practice dummy.

"A couple of times, he'd be practicing a new move or something, and he'd be like, 'Hey, let me try this,' " Chelsea's father and Marion principal Ken Arnhold said. "And he'd have her down on the floor in the living room, practicing that move out."

So when Adkins talked to Arnhold and other girls about joining the wrestling team in seventh grade, she decided to give it a shot.

And she wasn't the only girl.

"There was one girl I tried to talk into coming on the team my seventh-grade year," Arnhold said. "She didn't end up doing it. But my eighth-grade year, she started to come to practice. And so we talked another girl to try it out. And another.

"For a while, there were five girls on the team at one time."

That didn't last when she got to high school.

Since high school regulations don't allow athletes to compete in basketball and wrestling, kids competing in both sports had to chose.

And all but Arnhold chose basketball.

Her reason?

"Basically because I suck at basketball," Arnhold said. "I wasn't great at wrestling, either, but at least they were going to play me. At least I was going to wrestle."

And she has -- to good results.

Arnhold has medaled in every tournament this season.

One detriment, Arnhold admits, is her lack of upper-body strength. But she uses her speed, quickness and good lower-body strength to get around it. Arnhold finished second in a girls powerlifting meet last year.

"She's a good leg rider," Adkins said. "She does a good job controlling people, and she's very smart. She puts herself in position to take advantage of her speed."

However, regardless of her success, the question that always comes back is, "How do the guys like wrestling against a girl?"

Her teammates, Arnhold said, have been nothing but supportive.

"I don't get treated any different by them," Arnhold said. "I'm really accepted as one of the guys."

Surprisingly, rival coaches and parents have accepted her as well.

Very few have expressed reservations about their wrestlers competing against a girl. Only once, Adkins said, did a wrestler refuse to compete against Arnhold, and that was because it was against his private school's rules.

"I get a lot of encouragement from people I don't even know," Arnhold said. "At Halstead, one of the refs told me... he thought I did a really good job.... I have people come up to me all the time and say, 'You're doing great! Keep it up.'"

But fellow competitors?

Arnhold said they might still be bothered by it, but....

"I've beat so many guys, it shouldn't be a big deal anymore," Arnhold said.

So while she prepares for regionals in two weeks, Arnhold keeps herself busy with other endeavors.

She's on the dance team, in choir, in the Key Club, in forensics, and was the lead in this year's production of "Annie Get Your Gun," to name a few.

One thing she might not do again, however, is the double duty she pulled at the 2002 regional meet.

It was the only time she's been a wrestler and a cheerleader for the same event.

And Dad wants to keep it that way.

"It's one thing to see her over there, in pigtails and her wrestling outfit, after she's beaten you," Ken Arnhold said. "It's another to have kids ask you, 'Which one of those cheerleaders kicked your butt?' "

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The lady's a champ who beat guys at own game

Feb. 14, 2003

Her grandmother calls her "cute as a button." The rest of us can call her champ.

Vicki Scheeler is the wrestler for New Berlin West High School who last weekend took the Woodland Conference championship in her 103-pound weight class - the only championship on her team. It's a first for a girl in the conference, and perhaps the state.

A girl - cute as a button, taking on the guys at their own game - rules.

click for larger photo.

Get over it, boys.

The whole point of Title IX - the 30-year-old federal law banning sex discrimination in schools that get federal funds - was not necessarily to put a girl and a boy together on a wrestling mat. But to balance the scales of opportunity, it happens occasionally. Good. Vicki, 18, a spirited competitor, thinks she's learned more by wrestling boys than she would girls.

The National Federation of State High School Associations counted 244,636 boys and just 3,405 girls - some with their own teams - as wrestlers in 2002. About 30 girls wrestle with boys in Wisconsin, a point of contention for those who worry that boys can't win when they wrestle a girl, even when they win.

You like to think that protective big brothers keep their little sisters out of guys' grasps. Vicki's brother, Nick, put her in the middle of them. As captain of the wrestling team and with a girl already on his team, he suggested Vicki try it as a freshman.

"It was no big deal," she said.

Well, maybe a little deal. Vicki's mother, Pat, said she "wasn't so sure of the idea, being a mom." Vicki said her dad, Regs, was worried she'd get hurt - something she'd already accomplished on an all-girls' basketball team the year before.

The Scheelers, though, are parents who don't hold their kids back. Vicki, a senior now, is a four-year letter-winner in wrestling and also plays soccer.

What's to love about wrestling?

"I think it's that feeling when you step on the mat and it's just you and someone else. You're using so many mental skills, and so much physical skill. You're fighting, leaving everything you have that you've learned on the mat."

While she's just one of the guys among teammates and thinks most conference wrestlers were used to a girl competitor, about two or three times a season some boy would refuse to wrestle her.

"I like to think it's because I'm a good wrestler and they're afraid to lose."

Or, as one coach hypothesized, it's on "moral" grounds. They don't want to handle a female that way, though (my hypothesis) they might not have a problem on a Saturday night in the back of a car.

Vicki says snide remarks from the bleachers don't bother her. They pump her up.

She was nervous last Saturday - "I respect all of my opponents" - but probably not as nervous as the Cudahy wrestler whom she beat handily on points in the championship after a semi-final pin.

"I talked with him before, and he was a really nice guy," she said. If ego was bruised along with the flesh, Vicki didn't see it.

Tomorrow is the regional tournament. A Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association official said based on his research of state tournaments, a girl has wrestled in a team championship but never in individual competition.

There's always a first time.

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